Tyre Troubles for Jimmie Johnson

The no 48 NASCAR team have seen tyre troubles in the past and this weekend’s race brought back some very bad memories for them. Their driver, Jimmie Johnson saw a number of problems at the weekend with his tyres. He had a flat at the start of the race and then later had a puncture which left him spinning in to a wall and out of the race. This was something that has happened in the past as well, when in Southern California a tyre problem left him out of the race which he had been leading. Last year he also had a tyre problem as well as the year before. In fact since 2012 he has had seven tyre problems which is much higher than anyone would expect especially as in the same time period it has only had to pull out through mechanical failures twice.

This means that the crew are now having to work on reasons why the tyres are not performing as well as expected. Goodyear have said that the problems are likely to be due to low inflation pressure and even Johnson admitted that if they were told it was the teams fault, they would just have to accept that.

There were two other drivers with tyre problems at the weekend in practice; Joey Logano and Aric Almirola but they were not anything like as significant.

Crew chief Chad Knaus has accepted that there are problems that need to be addressed. However, some teams feel that they are keeping the pressure at that rate on purpose to get a good run and this could mean that they are risking problems with the tyres. However, it could be that people are just noticing it and making more of a fuss because it is so unusual to see a great driver such as Jimmie Johnson having such problems. He has already has a good number of wins this season so there is certainly no need for anyone to panic.

Fan of the Race! Richmond

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